Sunday, May 3, 2009

Before posting more random, boring facts about me, a post which is already finished, I’ve got something else I need to get out of my head.

I’ve always been a “daddy’s girl”, I’ve got no idea why and there’s no one left in the family with whom I’ll discuss this. Next to being a “daddy’s girl” I also was a “grandpa’s girl”, and there’s nothing wrong with neither of this, I had a lot of fun with both of them.

Most of my pre-teen summer vacations where spend at my grandparents, and with my parents being an hour of a car drive away this meant pure freedom. Most of the family lived in the same city where my grandparents lived, which meant visiting a lot of aunts and uncles. That family had a weird generation gap, at least on my grandma’s side but the youngest were still about 8 years older than me, which is an aeon when you’re only 7.

One of the things I clearly remember is the basement at my grandparents, or more precisely the space allocated to them, as they lived in a house with 3 other families. There where shelves on three of the walls, with one wall being reserved for self-made marmalade and conserves. The fourth wall, right below the window, was reserved for grandpa’s tools including a traditional workbench.

I never understood why my dad let himself talk out of getting this workbench, after grandpa had died and they had to empty the apartment.

Back to being a daddy’s girl. This included some embarrassing moments for him, cause there is a long line of years during which you could bet on me knocking over some glass or cup from the table during meals, this also happened regularly when he took me for his morning pints.

When I was about fifteen, my parents decided to build their own house, which was when the real fun began. My dad had always been very talented when it comes to the “handyman” stuff, which resulted in the financing of the house being based on lots of our own hours. In some ways, that summer was even better than the summers spent at my grandparents. There was not a single day when we weren’t at the construction site and despite me having small accidents every other day; I also learned lots of things.

There are only a few tools which I’ll never use, e.g. I have a weird fear of buzz-saws. Guess I’m lucky that we don’t own one.

But – look at this treasure, and please ignore the clutter around ;)

This post went in a completely different direction of what I had initially intended, so there’ll probably be a part two of this.